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Belgian comic criticised for racist depiction of Africans
- Thread starter Earthpainting
- Start date
somecrazymember
Banned
I'm belgian. This has been an issue in the past and I thought was finished by now ... 
Heckler456
Banned
I'm belgian. This has been an issue in the past and I thought was finished by now ...
Who writes them these days?
Palette Swap
Member
I expected some old school colonial racism from a comic strip of that era, not from a current day strip. Ugh.
The most telling part is that it went through editorial.
The most telling part is that it went through editorial.
Elijah Modnar
Banned
Well, that's a funny story, this is the second album in the "new style" where Suzy got small breasts and Spike got a hoody. I believe the current artists are Luc Morjaeu and Charel Cambré.
(not too sure, while I'm a big fan and collector of Francobelgian graphic novels and comics, I don't consider Flemish comics part of that scene)
shadow_shogun
Member
Reminds me of way the Africans were depicted in Tintin, one of the things I hated about that comic.
Sad to see it's still happening in modern times.
That's is not meant to be on the racist stereotype of "Mammy", its what we call mermaids in Nigeria and other West African countries.
Sad to see it's still happening in modern times.
That's is not meant to be on the racist stereotype of "Mammy", its what we call mermaids in Nigeria and other West African countries.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
whatyearisthis.gif
Mammoth Jones
Member
Yup. Not shocked from Belgium in the slightest. Leopold II was a monster. Not shocked that view of us is still there.
Sibersk Esto
Banned
The reason cartoons like these feature these kinds of lips come from the 1-2-3 punch of a cartoony artstyle, a habit of choosing a way too dark shade of black, and wanting to depict big lips.
A regular line for a mouth would get lost in the coloring so they make them big and of a contrasting color to stand out (red, white)
ebullientprism
Member
There was nudity in Sjors & Sjimmie comics back in the 80s
NSFW, I guess: https://www.bobbedoes.nl/_items/aaee9804-aa5e-4009-9149-41a6e1659390/5.JPG
Is this the "Blinds joke"? Dont speak the language.
I was listening to the radio this morning and they had the reaction of the publisher: they apologized for anything that might have made people uncomfortable and no racism was intended (of course, this part was just the standard non-apology), but she ended it with 'he's just meant to look stylisticly cartoony .Lambik (one of the main characters) looks weird and goofy as well!'
It doesn't translate that well especially if you don't know the comic and context, but man, they totally have no idea what the issue is here. France, Belgium and The Netherlands are giant comic countries (with the best/most famous ones all coming from Belgium and France), and growing up everyone here read them endlessly. Given that a lot of these series started in the 40s/50s/60s, you'd see a lot of this type of thing in the older issues. It really sucks that it's still a thing and that they really have no clue why it could be considered incredibly offensive. Especially in Suske en Wiske's case, which is constantly updating itself and its artstyle/type of stories to connect to modern young audiences. They really should have known better.
It doesn't translate that well especially if you don't know the comic and context, but man, they totally have no idea what the issue is here. France, Belgium and The Netherlands are giant comic countries (with the best/most famous ones all coming from Belgium and France), and growing up everyone here read them endlessly. Given that a lot of these series started in the 40s/50s/60s, you'd see a lot of this type of thing in the older issues. It really sucks that it's still a thing and that they really have no clue why it could be considered incredibly offensive. Especially in Suske en Wiske's case, which is constantly updating itself and its artstyle/type of stories to connect to modern young audiences. They really should have known better.
Here's the rest of that page: https://www.bobbedoes.nl/_items/aaee9804-aa5e-4009-9149-41a6e1659390/1.JPG
The colonel mistakes the tanning bed for a neon sign and places it outside on the wall to attract customers. Sally, the owner of the beauty salon, gets furious and tells him to put it back inside at once. The colonel accidentally enters the dressing room and all the ladies think he's a pervert. When they give a policeman a description of the Peeping Tom's appearance, the colonel panics and instructs Sally to shave his hair and moustache. Eventually he escapes the crime scene, and Sally's happy she's made some money by giving the colonel a makeover.
The "blinds joke" sounds familiar. Is that another one where the colonel is mistaken for a pervert? It happens quite often in that comic
FloatingDivider
Member
Yooo I've been waiting to make a thread in this vein because I noticed that Belgian comics are racist... Not maybe racist, not sinterklaas style racist, like overt and obvious fucking racism. I'd go as far as to say it's their default modus operandi honestly... I'm not even joking, every single one of them has ridiculous racist depictions of black (and other ethnicities) people. Jommeke, Kiekeboe, Suske & Wiske, Kuifje, Asterix & Obelix, Nero, and Urbanus all have several issues with black people getting drawn like they rolled straight out of a minstrel show. As a black Belgian I never noticed during my childhood but it's awkward as fuck reading my childhood comic book collection, as an adult, and playing spot the racist bullshit. Black people are also frequently depicted as criminals, prostitutes, lazy shiftless people etc... The amount of positive depictions of a Black person in Belgian comics is probably somewhere in the single digits.
It's shit like this:
I could keep going too. I honestly can't bring myself to read my childhood comic collection anymore because I keep running across shit like this constantly. I'm kind of contemplating getting rid of all of them.
It's shit like this:
I could keep going too. I honestly can't bring myself to read my childhood comic collection anymore because I keep running across shit like this constantly. I'm kind of contemplating getting rid of all of them.
It's a bit depressing to see there's so little progress in the depiction of coloured people in some comics.
Here's an example of Sjors & Sjimmie, a Dutch comic that did change things. And that was back in 1975!
Pre-1975 Sjors & Sjimmie:
Post-1975:
More European comics should get with the times and follow this example.
Man WTF at the pre-1975 Sjors & Sjimmie. Didn't know these existed.
I loved reading Sjors & Sjimmie when growing up, always borrowed them from the library. Guess they took out all the pre-1975 ones, glad they did, shit would have ruined it for me. Never bothered with Tin Tin because of it.
ElfQuest and Sjors & Sjimmie were my favourites.
< 70's stuff is awkard as hell. I only know Dutch/Belgian examples but it wouldnt surprise me if this was considered 'normal' around most Western-European countries.
Altough "Een Neger in het Dorp" actually has a "postive" story, it's basically about a religiously converted african who visits a small Dutch town, and people realise he is not a "savage". Using those quotes freely since it is still super awkward
Things fall apart
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
Not to justify or defend it in any way, but a lot of those are really old, no? I think it's fair to point out the racism but probably not worth getting upset about for the really old (pre-70's) stuff. I'm more appalled that this still happens today, though. Like, WTF people. Even the Tintin author moved away from his super-racist African portrayals of the 30's, in his later issues (though it was still a bit condescendingly racist at times, but at least he tried to improve... xD here's a link about Hergé trying to modify some dialogue after being criticised, you can still see the condescending colonialist mentality but it was interesting to see that he was legit trying to improve)
Also, Asterix is French, not Belgian, but yeah that pirate guy was always a huge caricature, even if all the characters were exaggerated/caricatural to begin with he still stood out.
FloatingDivider
Member
I mean I get what you're putting out there but I'm going to disagree. (apart from the obelix&asterix being french bit)
I was born in the late 80's and virtually all of my childhood comic books are from the early 90's but I just went with the first illustration I found on google image search for most of these. I could easily scan in dozens of relatively recent (2005 and up) comic books and still have all of these minstrelsy black people to show off. If they're trying to improve that's probably worse because it means the racism is so ingrained they don't even see it. I also know for a fact one of those Kiekeboes I linked is recent because I saw it in the bathroom at my moms house recently and that's where she stores new purchases. Urbanus also still has negerke. The rest of them are probably equally tonedeaf but I understandably don't really keep up with them anymore.
Elijah Modnar
Banned
A lot of French use the same style a as Belgian artists, the Marcinelle style, which utilizes a very caricatural style, i.e. this example from the French series Les Innomables:
In their defence (and also in the case of the more modern time examples of the Flemish series), the stories themselves were rather wholesome in almost all cases, and maybe even empowering to the characters. It's just the depiction that poses problems.
Gunslinger
Member
These drawings are pretty racist wtf? Pitch black skin and lips bigger than their face wtf? Is Belgium still stuck in 1920s? This is like birth of a Nation "black face" bad lol wtf?
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
Oh wow. I just assumed your examples were old because you cited Asterix (which is legit old). My Hergé example is from the 50's/60's. If your examples were from the 90's and even the 2000's, then fuck, that's really really bad. -___-
That's what I was thinking. What a mess.
Skellig Gra
Member
And yet Europeans still want to pretend racism is barely a thing compared to the US.
MetroidPrimeRib
Banned
Its like a dogs mouth. Its not even an exageration of stereotypes so much as deliberately drawing them to look less human.
This is more exaggerated then the ol classic WW2 era Japanese with the rice hat, fu man chu and mile long buck teeth
It's almost a Mammy Nun:
Head like a potato, lips like a duck (wit de nakkin' on).
Stay away from the mashed potato.
Fantastapotamus
Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
Its like a dogs mouth. Its not even an exageration of stereotypes so much as deliberately drawing them to look less human.
Jesus, that looks like a fucking humanoid seal.
What the fuck
Reminds me of way the Africans were depicted in Tintin, one of the things I hated about that comic.
Sad to see it's still happening in modern times.
Fuck, I hated seeing this and Asterix and Obelisk and all the other french comic books, and this was about 15 years ago. And we have to learn to ''love'' these book (because yes they are good)
But we were never given an explanation as to why they looked that way.
Again: these are children books
Fuck, I hated seeing this and Asterix and Obelisk and all the other french comic books, and this was about 15 years ago. And we have to learn to ''love'' these book (because yes they are good)
But we were never given an explanation as to why they looked that way.
Again: these are children books
Product of their time for most of them, both France and Belgium were deeply entrenched in old-school colonialism. The fact that some authors still use similar depictions is disgusting though...
That is the muzzle of an animal.
Yeah I can imagine that most caricature artists never knew about the controversy of these caricatures. I myself only knew about that through this forum. Looking at these again it's interesting how much more aggressive this caricature tends to be compared to the other caricatures. For the earlier times I can understand it as they were completely oblivious to that but nowadays it's kinda baffling, really.
Even stranger, the ones who did draw in a serious style actually portraied them correctly even back then. Just look at Barbe Rouge, who predated Asterix, which used them as direct caricatures:
Herge was embarrased about it and even one of the earlier comics, The BlueLotus was actually way more progressive considering the time it was drawn (1936), even spent several panels explaining that prejudices are wrong.
Of course this was still back then but I was really surprised how much he tried avoid racist representations after that, even if at the time back then it was impossible to completely shake all these off.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
How old is this? Pretty good art. But it does use a more "serious" art style. Asterix draws everyone as goofy caricatures, with giant noses and chins and ears and so on (even the women), not that it's a great defence for racial stereotypes, but it's not as bad as, say, normal proportioned white people and caricatural black people like some of those examples in this thread.Yeah I can imagine that most caricature artists never knew about the controversy of these caricatures. I myself only knew about that through this forum. Looking at these again it's interesting how much more aggressive this caricature tends to be compared to the other caricatures. For the earlier times I can understand it as they were completely oblivious to that but nowadays it's kinda baffling, really.
Even stranger, the ones who did draw in a serious style actually portraied them correctly even back then. Just look at Barbe Rouge, who predated Asterix, which used them as direct caricatures:
Yeah, but those are shit comics. We also have the likes of XIII, were we have this:
And she's not just a pretty face, she's pretty badass.
adamsappel
Member
Reminds me of way the Africans were depicted in Tintin, one of the things I hated about that comic.
Even when Hergé got better, he still wasn't that good about it.
Most think this is Zappa's worst album, ironically. It was eh to meIt's almost a Mammy Nun:
Head like a potato, lips like a duck (wit de nakkin' on).
Stay away from the mashed potato.
It's his secret best album only revealed once you know the libretto off-by-heart and do an am-dram performance when listening to it.
Bit of an investment, I grant you.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
Oh I know, I mentioned that in another post. Also that translation in the second pic is probably based on the initial dialogue, Hergé changed it in a re-issue after being told it was racist.
Still, as bad as it still was, it's sketchy that 1960's Hergé is better than some modern 1990's comics... WTF are modern European comic artists doing :\
Started around early 60s.
It's true that Asterix caricatures almost everything and I essentially agree with that, especially considering the majority of the comics were done in the pre-2000s but it still feels kinda strange reading them nowadays given what we know today.
Didn't they change Babas appearence in later comics or reprints though? I seem to remember that he was depicted more sensibly, at least without these lips in one of them.
I tweeted about this last Friday when the strip appeared in the newspapers. The image in itself is absolutely disgusting, but what amazed me even more is how some big newspapers in Flanders were running a story about the Suske & Wiske reboot with the exact same image as quoted in the OP. Which means no one, from the creators - to the publisher - to the newspapers running the story, noticed that something is seriously wrong with that image.
My tweet about it got featured in some news articles, and I got mentioned on Twitter all weekend by a bunch a racists saying I shouldn't attack 'our cultural heritage'. Some even going as far as saying that, as a white man, I was betraying my race. Smh. And I got off easy, some people of African descent who also talked about this issue last weekend got it way worse.
We've still got a long way to go here in Belgium ...
EDIT: I should mention that there was a movement of illustrators here in Flanders coming up with ideas to correct the image in question.
My tweet about it got featured in some news articles, and I got mentioned on Twitter all weekend by a bunch a racists saying I shouldn't attack 'our cultural heritage'. Some even going as far as saying that, as a white man, I was betraying my race. Smh. And I got off easy, some people of African descent who also talked about this issue last weekend got it way worse.
We've still got a long way to go here in Belgium ...
EDIT: I should mention that there was a movement of illustrators here in Flanders coming up with ideas to correct the image in question.
hey, no one who has experienced Monsieur Cannibale ever said that
Earthpainting
Member
This can go step on a landmine. It evidently is part of our history, but in no way, shape, or form do I want stuff like this representing our heritage. If things are bad and fail to evolve, they'll just have to go away entirely. If they think racism is intrinsic to Belgian comics, then maybe those comics are not worth saving. The only reason people are feeling stubborn about this shit is because they would rather pretend nothing's wrong than admit to their own (culture's) ignorance. We no longer use asbestos to contribute to our culture, so how about we stop using dehumanising racial caricatures as well?Kitsuné;241987731 said:
I know it's a bit silly to censor them after they tried to take a stand, but I figured it would have been easier to keep things GAF-safe and on-topic.